Lunchables

With recent news that the healthy school lunch initiatives undertaken by the First Lady might just be starving our kids, I can imagine quite a few in the K through 12 ranks are contemplating a switchover to the old brown bag lunch. As a former “bringer,” (every day, for 12 straight years, and DAMN PROUD) let me welcome them to the world where anything goes and what your parents pack you very rarely ends up down your gullet.

I’m talking trades, haggling, and straight up bartering for the best goods this side of a 7-Eleven snack aisle.

But before you trade away for old Howie Klinchenstien’s two bags of Cooler Ranch Doritos and Rachel Jimbobberycooters’ Dunkaroos, you’re going to have to equip yourself with some serious hardware. Forget that couscous and marinated mozzarella salad Mom made the other night, and ditch Dad’s homemade crunchy chickpeas with cumin and black pepper. These days, the freaking lunch lady’s can whip up that, and hell if I’m gonna eat something I can’t even pronounce. No, what’s really hot on the middle school lunch trade market right now is a bit more…how should I put this…elicit.

Chicken nuggets are where it’s at. And thanks to Lunchables’ new Snackers Honey BBQ Chicken Nuggets, you can not only bring chicken nuggets to your no-fun lunchroom, but you can do so without even having to sneak into the teacher’s lounge to use the microwave.

Because the 15 second heating instructions are “optional,” I decided to sample my pre-cooked nuggets both cold and warm. I highly suggest neither option.

After opening the bag, you’ll be greeted by a smell I can only describe as “soggy cafeteria chicken nugget.” Ah, the sweet smell of maltodextrin, corn meal, and reconstituted white meat chicken with rib meat. Tell me, is there anything more American?

Cold, the nugget breading rubs off on your fingers in a mealy and grainy way that gives new meaning to the time-honored grade school condition known as “you have cooties,” and tastes strongly – and only – of salt and garlic. The chicken is moist, I guess, but moist only in the sense that it came off as a circle of chewy chemicals and stuff that might have once gone “cock-a-doodle-doo.” Despite its name, I definitely didn’t taste any honey or BBQ flavor.

Warmed up, the nuggets are even worse. The breading becomes soggy and oily, covering your fingers in a mealy and wet substance that’ll make you drop more footballs in a recess pick-me-up game than Terrell Owens dropped in his short-lived preseason comeback bid for the Seattle Seahawks. The heated nuggets taste like, well, heated and overly salted pieces of something vaguely chickeny, with little, if any, taste of honey or BBQ. Instead, there are strong generic garlic and cornmeal flavors in the pinkish, orangeish “breading,” which can’t be overcome by ketchup or a dipping sauce alone.

On a scale on 1 to 10 in terms of the classic middle school lunch tradability matrix, Lunchables Honey BBQ Chicken Nuggets score about a negative six. Meaning that if you’ve got a hankering for the lightly salted rice cakes that the girl on the “diet” has or the fishy smelly thing the kid from Thailand always brings to the table, then you’ve got the golden ticket. Otherwise, these little guys keep to the time-honored Lunchables tradition of making actual 1990s cafeteria food look halfway decent, and making us all question how we survived eating that crap.

“Green, green gasoline. You forgot your ding-a-ling,” was what some my elementary school classmates would yell to me if I ended up with the green lunch tray in the cafeteria. To this day, I still have no idea what it means, but I do know I got the green lunch tray quite often. In order to help me cope with the constant reminder that I forgot my ding-a-ling, I once yelled the rhyme to a boy one grade below me to try to show that I could be an asshole too, but he ended up crying on the spot. I felt bad, so I gave him the cookie that came with my lunch to make him stop crying and I never did it again.

If only Oscar Mayer had Lunchables back when I still occasionally wet my bed. I wouldn’t have gotten the green tray and I wouldn’t have cupped my balls so much in elementary school to make sure I didn’t forget my ding-a-ling anywhere. Also, I wish hip-hop was mainstream in the early 1980s, then my groin cupping wouldn’t have made me look like a kid who enjoyed touching himself, instead I would’ve been a poser.

I’m trying to imagine what my elementary school life would’ve been like if I had the new Oscar Mayer Turkey + Cheddar Sub Sandwich Lunchables. I’d probably living large and in charge with all the honeys in Strawberry Shortcake and Care Bears t-shirts around me wanting a little taste of either the mini turkey and cheddar sub sandwich, mini Nilla Wafers, Tree Top Applesauce, Tropical Punch Kool-Aid or the packet of Kraft Fat Free Mayo.

The mini turkey and cheddar sub measured in at four inches long and two inches wide. The turkey had a smokey flavor, the cheese looked like it was government-issued and the bun, which was made with whole grain, was soft and little chewy, but not stale; the mini Nilla Wafers were as tasty as regular Nilla Wafers; the sweet Tree Top Applesauce gave me something to flick with the included red spoon; the packet of Tropical Punch Kool-Aid added to the 6.5 ounce bottle of water had a slight artificial sweetener taste; and the packet of Kraft Fat Free Mayo was frickin’ huge and way more than enough for the tiny sub sandwich.

The Oscar Mayer Turkey + Cheddar Sub Sandwich Lunchables is a beast of a feast for those who have just reached puberty and below. The flavor of the sandwich was decent, even with the fat free mayo, and the addition of the applesauce helped make it a decent rounded meal, but its price seems a bit high and I probably wouldn’t buy it for my child, if I had one. Although it would prevent my kids from getting the green tray and because it has so much food, they could tease another kid for having the green tray and easily give them the Nilla Wafers when they start crying.

There’s a nine-year-old out there who thinks the Oscar Mayer Lunchables Grilled Chicken Wrapz is the greatest muthafucking thing ever. Okay, if that nine-year-old was a drunken sailor, then they would probably think that, but I don’t totally agree with that rum-filled, foul-mouthed kid.

This kid-sized meal consisted of wheat tortillas, grilled chicken breasts, ranch sauce, and mild taco sauce for two wrapz. It also included a fun-sized Nestle Crunch bar and the greatness beverage in pouch form EVER, a fruit punch Capri Sun. Out of all the things that were included, I was the most excited about the Capri Sun, because I enjoy products from the 1980s, I get to stab something with a plastic straw and not get arrested for it, and there’s only one Capri Sun. It’s great tasting fun when you punch open one.

The Capri Sun was the most exciting thing about this Lunchables, but the grilled chicken wrapz were the main entree. With most Lunchables that contain chicken, it isn’t required to heat the chicken before eating since it is already pre-cooked. If I were a parent feeding it to my child, the cold chicken would probably bother me, but as a thirtysomething-year-old male without children who is hungry, it doesn’t really bother me at all. A degree from the Universidad de Taco Bell isn’t necessary to put a wrap together. All you do is lay out the tortilla, spread out some chicken, squirt some ranch sauce, drizzle some taco sauce, roll it up, and then hope some schoolyard bully doesn’t threaten you for it before you eat it.

The tortilla was a little tough since it’s been refrigerated, and again, it was a little weird eating cold chicken, but overall the chicken wrap was decent because who knew that ranch sauce combined with taco sauce would taste surprisingly good. It’s definitely better than most FDA regulated school lunches and a peanut butter and jelly sandwich your mom made with love and kindness.

Since it is a meal made for kids you might be wondering whether or not it could fill up an adult who doesn’t mind the shame of eating a Lunchables. If you’re on the smaller side, this Lunchables might be filling, but if you’re Michael Phelps, you’re probably going to need to eat ten of them.

The Lunchables people are here to kick you in the balls and there’s nothing you can do about it. That’s right, they are the latest brand to join in on the craze of “extremification” in the world of product marketing. Lunchables are now “Maxed Out” and presumably ready to proverbially rock out with their cocks out.

I was curious to see if this new product had anything to do with the recent film Maxxxed Out, a fine film starring Jenna Haze, Sunny Lane, and other girls whose names sound like weather descriptions. However, it appears as though Lunchables is not yet extreme enough for hardcore porn.

I was intrigued by this new spin-off because I actually like the original Lunchables. Sure, the meat is slimy and the cheese resembles candle wax, but it is a consistent and comfortable reminder of my salad days as a fledgling youth. Plus, it tastes just like a turkey sandwich, but with 0% of the dignity.

The changes with the Maxed Out variety seem to be minimal. You get more food, but the quality is generally the same and the origin of the meat is just as ambiguous. I got the Deep Dish Pepperoni one, which is actually neither deep or made with pepperoni. It boasts “pepperoni flavored sausage,” which struck me as odd because real pepperoni is about as cheap as sausage gets. There is about half a centimeter for you to fill your crust with, so it’s not very deep unless you’re some type of amoeba.

It came with two crusts and enough sauce, cheese, and pepperoni flavored sausage to make decent sized mini-pizzas, so I can’t really complain about the quantity. It’s just too bad that the sauce tastes like strawberry marmalade and that the faux pepperoni tastes like nothing. I finished one and imagine that a child might be able to enjoy it, but it wasn’t a very pleasant experience.

To wash it down, you get a mini bottle of water. A bottle of water with my Lunchables? Lame. Even though they include a Kool-Aid pouch to turn it into a soft drink, it doesn’t change the fact that a perfectly healthy bottle of spring water was included with my junk food. Plus, it gives choosy moms a chance to rummage through the box and steal the precious packet of sugar and food coloring. The old school Lunchables had a badass pouch of Capri Sun with a graphic of a guy skating on the beach on it. Nothing got me more pumped up for tripping over soccer balls during recess.

A cherry-flavored Airhead is included for dessert. Airheads always confused me because they aren’t aerated and aren’t shaped like balloons. Maybe they are just made for stupid children, hence their blunt and inauspicious name. If this is true, then they are really rubbing it in.

All in all, Lunchables Maxed Out is a disappointing romp through our collective childhood memories. This saddens me, because it had so much going for it: my love of pizza, the promise of free video game rentals, and the logo, which looks like something that Wolverine from X-Men would have carved into someone’s chest. Alas, even the most extreme of superheroes couldn’t salvage this mediocre meal.

Item: Lunchables Maxed Out Pepperoni PizzaPrice: $2.99Purchased at: AlbertsonsRating: 4 out of 10Pros: Comes with ingredients to make two decent sized pizzas, big enough to fill a kid’s stomach. Fun to put together for children who may otherwise not receive enough arts and crafts in school. Wolverine fucking people up.Cons: Sauce is way too sweet and fake pepperoni doesn’t taste very good. Loosest use of the term “deep dish” ever. Comes with bottled water instead of the awesome pouches of Capri Sun. Generic new name doesn’t really make any changes to the original brand. Does not tie in with Maxxxed Out.

I’ve never had a Lunchables before, but I’ve always been curious about trying them. Sort of like how I’ve been curious about getting a nipple pierced.

I guess I’ve never tried them because I feel that I’m a little too old to be eating them. I’m also afraid to get caught with them in my shopping cart, because it will make me look like either a father or a big loser.

But then again, I do eat a lot of Pop-Tarts and kids cereals.

Hmm…So that’s why all the women turn their shopping carts away from me.

Anyway, a few weeks ago, Impulsive Buy reader Mia asked us if we could review the new Lunchables Chicken Dunks.

I agreed to look for them and believe me, I REALLY had to look for them.

For over a week, I went searching high and low for them, but couldn’t find them anywhere. Not at the national grocery store chain, or at the locally-owned supermarket, or at the world-dominating superstore behemoth. They were elusive, like topless photos of the Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen.

Wait. They’re 18 years old, right? I don’t want to seem creepy.

I already seem creepy?

DAMMIT!!!

Anyway, I thought that I would have to wait another week for them to arrive on shelves here in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. (Just to let you know, things like this come by boat.) Fortunately, while looking for lunch at the convenient store down the street, I finally happened to come across the Lunchables Chicken Dunks.

It seemed like it took forever to find them.

Well at least I didn’t have to wait in line for three and a half hours, like I had to do for the Bellagio’s Thanksgiving Buffet in Las Vegas.

When I got home, one thing that caught my eye on the box was the phrase, “Tastes Great…No Need To Heat.”

I thought to myself, “You can actually eat the Chicken Dunks COLD?”

Well I did just that, although I did heat up a couple of chicken pieces to compare. In both instances, no matter how many times I dunked the chicken into the ketchup (which they provided), they both tasted kind of gross.

It’s a good thing the Lunchables Chicken Dunks came with a tropical punch Kool-Aid Jammers juice because I NEEDED something to wash the chicken down.